Semiconductor based integrated circuits used in electronic devices include digital circuits based on complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. CMOS technology, however, is reaching its limits in terms of the device size. In addition, leakage current in CMOS based digital circuits is causing high power consumption even when these circuits are not being accessed.
As an example, servers in a data center are increasingly consuming large amounts of power. The consumption of power is partly the result of power loss from the dissipation of energy even when the CMOS circuits are inactive. This is because even when such circuits, such as random-access memories, are inactive and are not consuming any dynamic power, they still consume power because of the need to maintain the state of CMOS transistors. In addition, because CMOS circuits are powered using DC voltage, there is a certain amount of current leakage even when the CMOS circuits are inactive. Thus, even when such circuits are not processing operations, such as read/write, power is wasted not only as a result of the requirement to maintain the state of the CMOS transistors, but also as a result of the current leakage.
An alternative approach to CMOS technology-based systems is the use of superconducting logic-based systems.